DarkUFO - Lost

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NOTE: This interview was conducted before it was confirmed that there would be an extra hour of Lost this season.

Neither Damon Lindelof nor Carlton Cuse came up with the idea for ABC's cult favorite Lost, and they'd never met before the network and producer J.J. Abrams paired them as, respectively, Lost's head writer and show-runner. But while any number of people have had a hand in shaping Lost—from Abrams to ABC to the show's signature director, Jack Bender—when fans want to complain about a dangling plotline or an implausible scientific explanation for what's going on with that crazy island, they hold Lindelof and Cuse responsible. The duo have embraced that role, by hosting podcasts, appearing together at Comic-Con, and doing whatever they can to answer curious viewers' questions, without revealing too much. On the heels of a strong end to season three of Lost and an even stronger start to season four (give or take a couple of episodes), Lindelof and Cuse spoke with The A.V. Club about plotting the final third of this season (which begins airing Thursday, April 24), writing a geek-friendly series in the Blog Age, and whether fans misunderstand what kind of show Lost is.

(Two notes. When this interview was conducted, Lindelof and Cuse were in the middle of writing a two-part, two-hour finale. Since then, it's been expanded to a two-part, three-hour finale. Also, this interview contains numerous spoilers, though only for episodes of the show that have already aired.)

The A.V. Club: Are you done writing the finale yet?

Carlton Cuse: We were literally just talking about our weekend logistics, because we have been holed up in our office here, working very late every night. It's like writing an equivalent to a feature film in two weeks.

AVC: It'll be two hours long?

Damon Lindelof: It's going to air in two separate hours this year, because Grey's Anatomy has a two-hour finale that airs on May 22. They run from 8-10 p.m., and then the second hour of our finale will run from 10-11 p.m. So Hour One will air the week before. They're going to air it like they aired the original pilot, which was shot as a two-hour, then split up into two parts.

AVC: Which means you also have to think about how to end the first hour too, right? So it's on a cliffhanger?

DL: We do that with our two-hour finales anyway. We hope that hour one ends with some degree of momentum going out, because, believe it or not, ratings-wise, our two-hour finales always pick up viewers every half hour. We have to design hour two like you're just coming into the show anyway.

CC: To as much a degree as anyone can ever just drop into Lost.

AVC: Before you even started writing the finale, did you already know what was going to happen? Would you have known, say, three years ago?

CC: We don't have a detailed map, but we knew, for instance, that this year we'd be going from Denver to Kansas City.

DL: But our car broke down for a hundred days, and then we had to get there twice as fast. [Laughs.]

CC: [Laughs.] Yeah, we'd planned a lot more driving on the rural byways, then we ended up having to get on the interstate. The episodes after the writers' strike have been a real push, because we were going to do eight hours, and now we're doing five.

DL: Basically, the entire writing team sat in a room between Valentine's Day and the middle of March, and over a five-week period, we broke down all five hours of the show that we're going to produce. Then one entity would peel off and start writing as the rest of the room pressed forward. So we finished breaking down both hours of the finale just about a week ago, and everybody is taking a scene here and a scene there. Carlton and I have spent, as he said, 'til 1 or 2 in the morning every night this week whipping hour one into shape, and now we're proceeding with hour two.

AVC: Do you write in L.A.?

DL: Yes, we do.

CC: We're on the Disney lot, where we do all the stories, script work, casting, and post-production for the show. The filming itself is done on the island of O'ahu, but everything else is done here in Burbank.